{"id":300301,"date":"2026-01-23T23:22:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T23:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/300301\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T23:22:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T23:22:18","slug":"galway-man-completes-4800km-rowing-journey-across-atlantic-ocean-in-fewer-than-40-days-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/300301\/","title":{"rendered":"Galway man completes 4,800km rowing journey across Atlantic Ocean in fewer than 40 days \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Galway<\/a> man has won the solo class in The World\u2019s Toughest Row, completing a 4,800km journey across the Atlantic Ocean in fewer than 40 days.<\/p>\n

On Friday morning, Daragh MacLoughlin rowed into Antigua in the Caribbean after 39 days, 20 hours and 16 minutes at sea, from La Gomera in the Canary Islands.<\/p>\n

After finishing the race on his boat The Jasper, he told RT\u00c9<\/a> News at One, \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been beamed down from another planet\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThirty-nine days, thirty-nine nights on your own, on a boat about seven metres long and one metre wide, with no human contact and then all of a sudden, catapulted into the welcoming arms of friends and family is just absolutely amazing but it\u2019s a bit of a shock to the system.\u201d<\/p>\n

The World\u2019s Toughest Row got under way on December 14th, 2025.<\/p>\n

He said completing the race was a high for him. \u201cTo say that you\u2019ve gone 4,800km across the Atlantic, through whatever it can throw at you and it threw everything at me, to say that you did that and you did that alone is just absolutely amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the other hand, he said loneliness was a struggle, particularly during the first week.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut with the support of my wife and my family, I was able to put that to one side and focus on the job at hand which was to row, row, row and ultimately complete the crossing.<\/p>\n

The 42-year-old has been raising funds for two Irish charities: Irish Dogs for the Disabled and butterfly skin charity Debra Ireland. So far, donations stand at over \u20ac17,000, surpassing his \u20ac10,000 goal.<\/p>\n

\"MacLoughlinMacLoughlin at sea in his row boat. Photograph: World’s Toughest Row <\/p>\n

He described the competition as a \u201ccatalyst to shine a light on two fantastic charities.\u201d<\/p>\n

After more than a month at sea, Mr MacLoughlin said, \u201cit\u2019s going to take me a couple of hours to just get my feet back on the ground and even on the subject of being on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added his legs are still feeling \u201cvery shaky\u201d. <\/p>\n

With 43 rowing boats taking part, some with teams of two, three or four people, Mr MacLoughlin, by himself, came 14th overall and took top spot in the solo class. <\/p>\n

\u201cI live by the ethos of \u2018be better today than yesterday\u2019 every day and this certainly has played into that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Galway man has won the solo class in The World\u2019s Toughest Row, completing a 4,800km journey across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,1878,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,1181,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-300301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-galway","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-rte","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115946988761593659","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}